


Lost and Found

by IntuitivelyFortuitous



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Finding, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Multi, Plants, Plotty, Trauma Recovery, many mysterious worlds, remnants of Vulcan, spones - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 12:32:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8285992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntuitivelyFortuitous/pseuds/IntuitivelyFortuitous
Summary: Spock got a message on Alpha shift.None of it made any sense besides his name and an address, which, were he relying on the human thing called intuition, was a little bit suspicious. It could be a trap. If the result of the last few missions were taken into account, it likely was a trap. In hindsight, it might have been a snare of sorts, an addiction. He was fixated on finding things he had thought were long gone.





	1. Dry Climate

The message arrived on Alpha shift. It read:

 

_Received at *u7%/J on [-0 &3.,}_

_To: S’chn T’gai Spock; USS Enterprise_

_From: >sss$3nd%r X //jj68/_

 

_Phirnouai Province, Delta 09:00_

(a bit of code gibberish)

_Sector IV, 18863_

(and a jumbled mess of letters in an unknown language)

 

Had he not been using a _very_ secure server, Spock would have thought it was spam. The code was nonsensical and the language one he could make neither heads nor tale of, but it didn’t matter just then. He was on duty. He should _really_ let it be. He turned back to his station. 

It itched. 

He had already looked over the scans from the planet and confirmed that the ionic fields would be clear whenever Jim could possibly choose to beam down. At this point, any other tests would be redundant. He could take a break.

Of course, he would have to wait until he was off to actually do the logical research, but he couldn’t just leave it there, undeciphered and alone for hours. He glanced around the bridge, first at Jim, who was ranting animatedly at something Chekov gave him. Sulu was huddled up to his station looking like he would kill anyone who interrupted him, and Scotty was idly charming a yeoman. That left McCoy, from whom Spock would never ask for casual assistance, thanks much, and his ex girlfriend. He believed this was a situation that humans referred to as a ‘catch 22’. As much as his friendship with Uhura had begun to mend, McCoy was still looking like the better option. 

He shook himself. Uhura, given her qualifications, would be most logical to approach on the matter of the message. 

He opened his mouth to speak to her and swiveled his chair around to find her staring at him, an eyebrow raised in a very good impression of himself. That seemed to be the point, given the smirk tugging on her lips. 

“You look troubled.”

Troubled? Unlikely. “I have received a message that I am unable to decipher. I was going to ask you for assistance.”

She immediately reached for his Padd. “Alright, give it here.” Uhura frowned, twisting a strand of hark hair. “It’s Boruvan.” She tapped her fingers against her thigh. “It’s an address. I couldn’t tell you what the code is, but that,” she pointed to the symbols, “isn’t too far away from where we’re scheduled to deploy.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Your help is appreciated.”

“You’re welcome, Spock.”

They would be on Boruv in three days, six hours, and five minutes. He glanced at the sender, or lack thereof. It could be a trap. If the history of previous diplomatic missions were taken into account, it _was_ a trap. 

Jim, were he involved, would suggest that it may be an SOS from a troubled life form. 

“Captain,” he said, rising from his seat. Jim looked up from the data that he had his nose buried in and smiled. 

“Yeah, Spock?”

“I have received a message from an unknown sender. It contains an address on Boruv.”

The smile dropped. “Awfully coincidental that we’ll be landing there in a few days, don’t you think?”

“Three days, six hours, and four minutes, Captain.”

Jim rolled his eyes. His shoes made soft clicks as he approached. “Can you show me?” he asked over Spock’s shoulder. 

Spock passed him the Padd. 

“Hey, this looks like the kind of signature that a telepath leaves on electronics. There was this Betazoid girl who sent me messages that were so disorganized I couldn’t tell one word from another—her mind was so strong it was actually messing with the computer. I mean, of course I knew what they said, but the code was all over the place.”

Uhura rolled her eyes. 

Spock watched as the captain stalked away with his Padd. He turned around, pointed at his first officer, and said, “I’m going to try and isolate the address. See where this came from. I’ll give it back to you in a few.”

Well, now he no longer had a mystery to solve or the ability to do his job properly. 

“Jim, at least give the man a break if you’re going to take off with his equipment,” McCoy mumbled from the corner. 

“Oh, right.” Jim shrugged. “I didn’t mean to keep you away from your science.” 

“I do have obligations that I can attend to elsewhere.” He nodded politely and turned towards the labs. The doors made a metallic swish as they closed behind him. 

 

Four hours later, Jim informed him rather testily that he could not find the address. If Jim couldn’t figure it out and Scotty couldn’t decipher it (since he had undoubtedly run for help when he reached a dead end) then _he_ could probably get it to work.

He couldn’t. It irked him tremendously.

 

They arrived on the planet three days later. 

It was a tundra climate with very little rainfall and a sun that was just a bit too mild for Spock’s Vulcan temperament. The ground was so dense with long, hard spikes of golden grass that he could barely see where his feet were going. He reached out to touch one of them. It left a tiny ball of pollen on his finger. 

Ensign Bernard and a security woman by the name of I’carf paced behind the party looking like foxes with their hackles raised. Dr. McCoy was fondling a tricorder as if it was his last line of defense and Jim was idly making eyes at a particularly symmetrical humanoid. Spock wondered what it would take to convince him to check cultural standards _before_ flirting. 

The sound of a thousand tiny bells filled the air like a fine mist. Jim dropped to one knee, motioning for the others to follow suit. The envoy had arrived, or so it seemed, headed by a blue woman much taller than he or the captain with long tubes flowing from her neck and the back of her head. Spock knew her to be Tokar, Ambassador to Xeophina, and one of the several leaders of their current province. She was beautiful. A gust of wind threaded a scent not unlike a cactus flower through the grass. If there were chemicals involved, he decided they were not aimed to ensnare. He felt the weariness sap from his system. 

“You are captain Kirk,” she said without a hint of a question, “and you are S'chn T'gai Spock.” Even her tongue was blue. “We have matters to speak of,” she continued, “but not with present ears. F’iqe has generously offered his family home as quarters to your crew. He asks only that you do not keep the weapons you carry, for his daughters are still quite young.” 

The counselor in front whom she referred to with masculine pronouns nodded politely. Spock was unable to discern biological gender differences between most of their species.

Jim smiled. “The quarters are much appreciated. My crew will do as asked and leave behind our phasers.”  
He tilted his head meaningfully at the security officer who looked more than uncomfortable with the prospect of leaving her weapon behind. Doctor McCoy seemed to be fighting a smile. Spock did not understand his distaste toward things that had been and would continue to be used in his defense. 

That afternoon, Spock was left behind. He was not pleased. Jim had left him with a heartening, “Hey, you kids have fun while I’m off doing grownup work!” 

As much as he would have liked to, Spock did not retort that he would much rather be ensuring that the leader of their current company not offend any alien royals.

That was four hours ago and the inside of his room had not gotten any more interesting. 

He checked his inbox (he would not admit to having checked it twice as often as he would have otherwise) and found nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing new, and nothing interesting. With a flick of his hand, he brought up a map of the surrounding area. The address read 1339 10649 Fortasi Province, Location VIX. He was not proud that he had no idea what it meant. 

The door creaked open. 

“Spock? Are you still…oh, of course you’re awake, who am I kidding.” Uhura smiled brightly. 

“Has the matron of the house released you from her grasp?” he asked. 

“Oh, she’s sweet, don’t get me wrong. She’s just very enthusiastic. I don’t think they get many visitors. They’ve got some weird thing about communication here that makes it very difficult to communicate with those outside your socioeconomic class. Leonard is still playing with the twins.” She sat down and crossed her legs. She had changed from her usual regulation reds and into the local garb, which consisted of a lot of light brown. She made it look good, of course. Not that Spock thought about it much anymore.

“Did you find your conversation productive?” he asked, still flipping through his inbox.

“Very! Oh, and she gave me a nice sightseeing map. If, you know. You’d like to use it.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you are referring to.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about following the address?” she asked, eyes bright.

Oh, so that was what she meant. “I have. I simply doubted that the captain would be pleased if we went without him.” 

Uhura rolled her eyes. “Spock, if we go without Jim, we are way less likely to get kidnapped or assaulted or—”

“Four point three eight times less likely,” he corrected. 

“Exactly.”

She stared at him. This was the pleading stare, the puppy dog eyes, the compelling gaze that so few could resist, including him. And, just maybe, he might be a little bit curious.

“I will get ready,” he said. “I recommend leaving before the sun goes down.”

Her eyes shone with victory. 

This, of course, was exactly when Doctor McCoy walked into the room without so much as a warning knock. His face morphed from a pleased smile, something Spock had definitely never seen before, to the very picture of suspicion, something Spock had _absolutely_ seen before.

“Hold it right there, where do you two think you’re going?”

Uhura smiled innocently. “We were just going for a walk. A private one,” she said.

McCoy crossed his arms. “I’ll fall for that cute look you’ve got there when hell freezes over, kid. Where are you going?”

“I received a message several days ago, Doctor, containing an address in the native language. It is relatively close by, and I thought it a reasonable hour to search for it,” Spock said.

“You mean the mysterious note you got on bridge? Alright, I just put the girls down for a nap. Let’s go.”

“Excuse me?” said Nyota incredulously.

He raised an eyebrow. “You can’t think that you’re going to follow this bread crumb trail without someone to put you back together when you inevitably find some way to fuck up?”

Spock blinked. He didn’t really have an argument as to why they shouldn’t have a doctor with.

“Well,” Uhura said, “I guess so.”

“Damn right, you guess so. When are we leaving?”

 

\--

 

“Okay, give it here.”

“I am navigating us perfectly fine, there is no reason to—”

“Spock? You’re sweet, but this map is not the same as a Vulcan map. You do not read it like a Vulcan map,” Uhura snarled. “It’s not an earth map, either, Doctor, so stop _hovering!_ ”

“Jesus, alright,” McCoy said.

She flicked the map to the other side of the screen. “Well.”

Spock and Leonard leaned forward slightly in hopes that they were not ‘hovering’. The afternoon sun was angling toward the hills, coating the side of the hill in gold. It was cold for him, and he was relieved that the doctor had suggested he bring a jacket. Grudgingly.

“It’s over that hill,” she said, pointing to the east, “but that’s not really a residential area. Look. Here’s where we are, which is the cultural equivalent of the slums. This is the mansion where we started. And this,” she flicked her finger down and the map rotated, “is spot X.”

“There’s nothing there,” McCoy said.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re not looking for a house, then.”

“It looks like farmland,” he suggested. “It wouldn’t surprise me of somebody’s barn isn’t on the database.”

“If it is a structure at all,” Spock added. 

Leonard nodded. 

They had to climb over a fence—jagged wire that (thank god) wasn’t electric. McCoy jumped it, shoved it down for Uhura, and held out his hand for Spock like he was a delicate princess that needed to be guided over a puddle. Spock resisted the urge to take him up on it just to see what he would do. 

Farmland on this planet wasn’t quite like others he had seen. All of the vegetables were clumped together in one large, colorful garden, root vegetables peeking from the surface beneath tomato-like fruits. Grasses all had their own individual squares. Not the acre wide ones that hearth had, but meter-wide squares that made up a checkerboard field around the homesteads. They walked across a former field, now empty, with tire tracks down the center. One elderly man of the local species peered at them suspiciously over his pile of gourds. Spock listened to Uhura and McCoy highlight the differences between the growth cycles of this planet and Earth as fields slowly turned into undeveloped tundra.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, standing in front of a barely-functioning fence, “but this is it.”

“Wow,” Leonard breathed. 

It was a farm house of decent girth, elegant and wide, but it hadn’t been beautiful for a very long time. The mud-brick foundation was flaking out over the crawling vines and the ground was littered with shattered panels of low-grade glass. The garden that had been left untended for years was slowly overtaking the yard. Twisted red-leaved shrubs hid pieces of metal while root vegetables that had gone to flower were making their own environments in the tundra. The air smelled like rich dirt.

His mouth went dry. 

A cactus. A S’chigi Ka’ai. A plant that by all rights should have been extinct. 

There were hundreds of them. Little fist-sized auburn bulbs built for the cold, high elevation of Vulcan’s mountains were nestled in between red tipped grasses and tiny yellow flowers. He leaped over the fence and brushed his hand over one, ignoring the spikes that wanted to cling to his hand. They were still soft for the summer. He plucked a button from the side, a pale yellow, and popped it into his mouth. 

_Yes,_ he thought, _it’s real._

He heard the crunch of Uhura’s boots next to him. He handed one to her. 

“This is a plant from Vulcan,” he said, “I had thought it to be extinct.”

Doctor McCoy knelt next to him, inspecting one with a keen eye. “It looks a bit like peyote.” 

“This plant has no psychoactive compounds, I assure you. The fruit is…was…commonplace in higher elevations and rarely harvested. You can eat it.” He watched as the doctor ran his hand along a yellow bud the size of his thumb and nibbled on the side. 

“It’s sweet,” he said, sounding pleased.

Nyota placed a hand on his shoulder. He ignored it in favor of running his fingers through the rocky topsoil.

“Hey,” said McCoy from his other side, “Spock, I’m not dumb enough to ask if you’re alright, but breathe, kid. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

Spock knew his breathing was a little bit erratic and his heart was pounding in his side, but he didn’t think it was that obvious.

“I’m going to call Sulu,” Uhura said to McCoy. 

He nodded. “Tell him I’ll send him some readings. Spock, let’s check the house.”

Spock was lead through a tilted wooden door by a hand on his elbow. He had to leap past rickety steps and over a fair amount of animal scat. He sneezed once. One of the windows had fallen in, leaving only slowly rotting organic screen material and cup was broken in the corner. Leonard took another look around the place, ran his hand over the muddy concrete of the walls, and frowned.

“Spock, nobody’s been here for thirty years.”

“So our mysterious sender has not likely been here themselves?” he hummed. 

“Definitely not. Do you think the cactus was what they wanted you to find?” 

“I don’t know,” Spock said. 

“They send you to a mysterious planet where an extinct Vulcan cactus has started a revival? Seems like it to me. No sign of the mystery man, though. Looks like our search is still on.” Leonard said.

He blinked. _Our_ search? Uhura poked her head inside, looking disdainfully at the floor. A communicator was still clutched in her hand. 

“Sulu says one per eight feet won’t harm the environment. Anybody home, Doctor? Records say the last owner of this place died twenty years ago and his kids just…let it go.” 

“Looks like they left it for good,” McCoy confirmed. “You can come in if you like. Nothing’s going to bite.”

“I wasn’t worried about biting animals, Doctor.” She paused, glancing at Spock. “I called Mitith.”

Spock stared blankly. 

“Our landlady, you…” she sighed. “She said if its government property, her family has access to anything they want. She said to consider it a gift.” Her boot crunched a piece of foundation. 

“Is it government property?” he asked. He didn’t get what she was insinuating, but apparently he was the only one.

“If it has been uninhabited for more than ten years, yes.”

McCoy beamed. “Well, Spock, looks like we have a delivery to New Vulcan en route. Did you see some pots over there, Uhura?”

She disappeared from the doorway. They followed. 

“Pots?” he asked McCoy.  
The other man just grinned. “We’ll send them up to Sulu gift wrapped with a bow. Besides, I haven’t had my hands in good dirt for a long time.”

“Jim’s going to hate us,” Uhura said.

She was probably right.

McCoy taught them to protect the roots for transplant, and Spock told them both how much moisture it could withstand before becoming compromised. He lightly pushed down the dirt, crushing air pockets. It was surreal. He didn’t know why they were helping him. By all known logic, Uhura shouldn’t want to spend her time with someone who had hurt her, and he had always known McCoy to be a bit adverse to his presence. There they were, though, clothes far past the point where sonics would clean them, potting cacti until their hands were raw and cold and they could barely see in the dark. The sides of his mouth twitched. He was in control of his emotions. That didn’t mean that seeing something from his home didn’t make his chest ache or that his companion’s presence didn’t grant a smile.

They sent forty-three cacti back to the ship, the exact number appropriate for environmental stabilization. Spock was grateful. He didn’t know how to tell them, but he thought they probably knew. 

 

\--

 

“Okay, I can’t believe this. You went without me. You actually _went without me_.” Jim paced across the room. He was, predictably, furious. “I’m seriously pissed off, you know that? I should restrict your shore leave. What’s the deal with that, anyway? You actually, like, left your rooms during shore leave. Since when do any of you—not you, Uhura, you have a life. You know what? I don’t care.” He snatched the bottle of bourbon away from McCoy who grunted in indignation.

“Hey, not our fault you left us here to rendezvous with a whole bunch of tall blue aliens. How were we supposed to know you’d want to come along?” 

Spock recognized this as an overt lie. 

Jim just nodded sarcastically. “Mhm. So you leave here without a telling anyone—without a _security team_ —and you think this will all be dandy? Is that it?”

“What, like a security team wouldn’t attract any attention at all,” McCoy said. 

“So this was a covert operation, then, was it? What if it had been an SOS call? What would you have done then?”

“Jesus, Jim, we went to a farm. We literally went to look at plants. We had Sulu on the line. We told…what’s her name?”

“Mitith,” Uhura supplied, trying and failing not to look amused. 

“We told Mitith where we were. She gave us permission. Take a damn valium, kid.” 

Leonard pried Jim’s hand off of the bottle and poured four drinks. He held one out and lifted an eyebrow. Jim glared and struggled against the beckoning gaze. He succumbed with a sigh, grabbed the brown glass, huffed, and fell to the plush cushions on the floor. 

“I’m making a rule,” he announced. “No more mysterious letter searching without me. That’s an order.”

Spock rolled his eyes.

“No, seriously. I’m coming with next time. I don’t care what you say, I’m going to be there.”

Nobody dared to say anything for about a minute. It was Uhura who broke the silence.

“I told you he’d be pissed,” she said with a smirk.

“The lady gets it,” Jim said fondly. “She always gets it.” If Spock didn’t know better, he would say that his captain was very stubbornly pouting. 

“If I get another letter,” Spock said, “you will be the first to know.”

“Good.”

“We good, kid?” asked McCoy.

“’Course.”

They beamed at each other. Spock would never understand human interactions.


	2. Chapter 2

He had heard Jim say before, “nothing ever happens when you’re waiting for it to,” which made considerably more sense than McCoy’s “a watched pot never boils.” When he got another message, it was long after he had resigned himself to the fact that it would not come. He had stopped checking his inbox eight times daily, in fact, he had mostly stopped thinking about it at all. They had dropped off the pots on New Vulcan already and he had relished seeing the poorly masked delight of the residents. 

He was sleeping when his inbox beeped and he woke faster than even he thought possible. 

_Do not open it,_ he told himself, _do not open it until Jim gets here._

“Spock to captain’s quarters,” he told the monitor. It pinged cheerfully.

There was a drowsy yawn from the other side. “’Sup, Spock? Couldn’t wait to see me?”

He didn’t even spare a moment to roll his eyes. “I have received another message.”

“Wait,” said Jim, “from the mystery sender?”

“Affirmative.”

“No shit! I’ll be right over!”

He heard a thud and a quiet mumble of distress before the connection went without a ‘Kirk out.’ Three minutes and thirty eight seconds later, his door swung open. 

“Well? Where is it? Come on, show me!” Jim’s eyes were still a bit puffy from sleep, but he looked as eager as a puppy. 

Spock nodded dutifully. His fingers swiped across the screen. He wasn’t surprised when he saw it. 

“It’s another…jumble,” Jim said. 

 

Received at ttttttTt

_To: S’chn T’gai Spock; USS Enterprise_

_From: <5sd2/>>_

_Athens 228_

_45.99876 N, 91.34236_

Spock looked at it. Jim shook his head. 

“That was a bit…anticlimactic. Any particular reason it was sent at this time, you think?” Jim asked over a yawn. 

Spock doubted that it had any significance. Knowing Jim, he would be awake all night trying to figure it out. He should have just waited until morning. “Perhaps you would find it easier to comprehend should you be properly rested, Captain,” he suggested. 

“It’s,” he yawned, “it’s Jim. You’re probably right.”

“Undoubtedly.”

 

Jim, yet again, entered his quarters with very little warning, Uhura and McCoy in tow. Spock was still meditating in his shorts, not that it bothered him, given that the modesty humans held ever so highly was illogical. Still, he felt the beginning of a headache sink into his skull at the noise breaking through his morning quiet. 

“I told you we should have knocked,” McCoy said, turning slightly pink. 

“Nonsense,” Uhura said, her familiarity with his quarters becoming rather obvious. “We’ve all seen Spock naked before one way or another.”

McCoy adopted a pinched look in response, possibly because it was true. There were some things that were unavoidable after living in close quarters on a spaceship for years. 

“So, where is it?” Jim asked, bubbly. 

“My Padd is on the bedside table,” he said. The pounding in the back of his head increased slightly as Jim effortlessly disarmed his privacy settings. 

Spock remained where he was on the deep red meditation mat as the others gathered around him on the floor. Jim opened his inbox and set the Padd between them. It seemed like an awful lot of fuss for four lines of characters. He recognized the obvious, but the rest was Jim’s territory. 

“Athens,” Uhura said, tracing the word with a finger. 

“Coordinates,” Jim added. 

“Is it earth or one of the colonies?” McCoy asked, rubbing a hand over last night’s stubble. 

Jim shook his head while Uhura loaded a galaxy NAV application on her own Padd. Her thumbs moved at lightning speed, typing in the coordinates onto earth and then to the colonies. The frown line between her eyebrows deepened as her results came back negative. Jim and McCoy watched eagerly, and Spock was content to sit back and enjoy the companionable silence. Finally, the app beeped. 

“Athens III,” she confirmed, zooming into full view. 

“That’s near Gamma Delta 1175?” Jim asked. 

Uhura confirmed it before he could speak up. “That’s right.”

It was McCoy who voiced the question rising in Spock’s own mind. “So nowhere near where we are headed. Does that rule out that it’s somebody who was watching for us?” 

Even as it was said, he knew that the timing of their previous contact had been far too close to be coincidental. Maybe the priority of the message had changed, but whether it begged them to immediately change course or gave them time for leisure remained to be seen. 

Spock stood up to get clothing. He didn’t try to bury the river of curiosity coursing through his mind. 

 

There was somebody in the house. 

He had expected it to be like the last time, with leaves of grass peaking through the floorboards and shards of light hitting the ground where the walls had fallen away. It was nothing like that. It was full of color and sound. 

There was a broken child’s figurine on the ground underneath a hedge—it looked like it might be a superhero—on the edge of an asphalt sidewalk indented by years of footsteps. The trail lead to a house. A well used, newly painted house that had probably seen several families grow. A dog bowl was overfilled next to the door and the scent of civilization hung from the trees like a fog. McCoy looked like he might be sick. 

“Six,” is all he said. Spock empathetic—the prospect of having a child himself had been very close to reality just months ago. Even if the purpose was to increase the Vulcan population, the thought of leaving one behind would have caused him distress. Jim squeezed the other man’s shoulder lightly. 

“Either we’re going do this or we aren’t,” he said. 

McCoy harrumphed and stepped determinedly across the sidewalk into their yard, his boots crunching on decorative river rock. All of the planets with all types of beauty and they had chosen one that looked just like Earth to the last detail. Blue paint was chipping from the synthetic wood door and there was a dead plant in a pot shoved to the side of the entryway. Spock strengthened his shields just in case as he watched Jim knock. When it opened, he smelled flowers and ashes. 

A woman in her forties with deep brown skin and red rimmed eyes peeked through the screen.

“I’m…” Jim hesitated, looking to McCoy. He was answered with a light shake of the head. 

“Good afternoon, Ma’am. I’m Leonard, this is Nyota, Spock, and Jim. We’re not interrupting anything are we?” He let his accent drawl. 

“Um, no, this is fine. What can I help you with?” She glanced warily at Spock and Jim, eyes lingering on the captain. He couldn’t tell if she recognized them or not. 

Jim rested his hand on Spock’s shoulder, silently prompting him. Humans responded well to emotional reasoning, he recalled. “I believe you may be in possession of something from my planet,” he said. 

“We’re sorry about how random this all is,” Uhura said, smile brushing away any suspicion. “It’s just, we got a message, and we thought that if it could possibly be true, then it was worth asking.”

The woman’s head tilted, curls brushing against the doorframe. “You’re Vulcan?” she asked, eyes widening. 

Spock nodded. 

“Yeah, I think my husband might have—oh, um, do you want to come in?” 

“We’d be grateful,” Uhura said. 

They filed in. The house wasn’t particularly small, but the halls were cluttered with boxes and toy cars and tiny stray shoes. The woman mumbled an apology as Jim squeezed past a box. It seemed like the majority of her things were packed away. Darkened spaces on the walls were the only indication that there had once been an array of pictures. They passed her kitchen where the door to an empty cupboard swung lightly. 

“Sorry about all of this—God, what am I doing? I’m Annabell. My husband was an air ferry pilot between here and Vulcan. He, um, he died a couple months ago.” She fumbled through a nearby tote. 

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Nyota said. She elbowed Spock rather hard in the side. 

“I as well,” he said diplomatically. 

The woman stilled for a moment. “I’m sorry for yours, too,” she said quietly. 

Jim’s back was steadily pushing him into a wall, and Spock glanced longingly to the kitchen for escape. McCoy had already begun to investigate an open door. Spock would have followed had he not thought it rude. 

“Are you moving?” Leonard asked, running a hand along the side of the replicated wood counter.

“Yes,” Annabell said. “I applied for a lot on Demnus 2, and they accepted me right away. Ethan’s just elated.”

“Ethan?” Uhura asked.

“My son,” she said, setting down a box and opening another one. “He’s at school right now. Wouldn’t he love to be here—you’re his idols, you know?” 

Ah, so she had recognized them. 

“We’re quite honored,” Jim said.

She set down yet another box. “You’re free to find a place to sit if you can. Would you like something to drink?”

“No thank you,” McCoy called, reappearing in the hallway. “We just came from dinner. You wouldn’t happen to have a screwdriver, would you? That cabinet in the kitchen could use a little tune-up.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’ll get around to it eventually,” she said, handing him an automatic drill anyway.

“It’s the least we can do. Thanks, that’ll work nicely.”

Spock (and Jim, after something of an eye-conversation with Uhura) followed Leonard to the kitchen where he fiddled with the hinges. 

“Spock, give me a hand,” he said. 

He obliged, looking to the other man for instructions even though it was fairly clear that he had only been given an exit from conversation. He held the cabinet flush with the wall while McCoy unscrewed little brass pieces. 

“Gonna have to drill another hole,” he said. “It was done wrong to begin with.” 

Leonard eyed the distance between holes and punctured a little dot with the tip of his screw. He shoved the hinge back where it belonged, tightened one screw and drilled the other through the paneling. The cabinet swung nice and parallel, but now they had nothing to do listen to Uhura and Anabell in the hall. They heard Uhura laugh. It looked like Jim was very close to pressing his ear against the door. 

“So,” Jim said. 

“Nice weather we’re having,” McCoy finished. 

Spock stifled a smile. 

“I have to wonder,” Jim began, spinning on a stool at the counter, “what an unknown alien would have sent us galaxies out of our way to go find. What could it be, a recipe book? A yoga figurine?”

“Some sort of dirty secrets about Vulcan’s past?” McCoy added.

Spock ignored them. “I can think of several items that are of great cultural importance, but none that ought to have been in the hands of a foreigner. Nevertheless, anything from Vulcan might be considered a rarity given the circumstances.” 

“What would you like to see?” Leonard asked, twirling a found pencil in his fingers. 

Spock thought for a moment. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see anything at all. 

“I don’t know,” he decided. 

The door cracked open and Uhura peeked her head in. “Found it,” she said. She had a neatly bound grey bundle tucked behind her back.

Jim launched himself from the chair. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, waving it tauntingly, “I haven’t opened it yet.”

"It _is_ a recipe book,” gasped Jim, grabbing for the parcel. 

Spock requisitioned it. He peeled away the thin cloth, inside was a book, a thick novel, faintly green pages pressed thin and drenched in ink and color. He could still see the veins of the leaf used to make the cover. 

“Fascinating,” he said, running his fingers down the delicate wrinkles in the parchment. The swirls of his language were as elegant as he remembered them, but these were old. They had a sharp staccato texture that hadn’t been the style for at least a century. There were illustrations every few pages, beautiful renders of members of his species engaged in various acts, some of which considered sacrilegious. 

“This…this could be an item of some controversy,” he said, flipping another page. “It is a reproduction, certainly, but a very good one. The reasons for its existence I cannot surmise.”  
“What do you mean, controversial?” Leonard asked. 

Nyota gently removed the book from Spock’s fingers. “It’s pre-Surak,” she explained, pointing to a picture of a Vulcan who appeared to be screaming, a weapon pierced through his abdomen. She flipped more pages. “There isn’t a single mention of the current religious power. ‘Banish your thoughts,’ he began, ‘and clear your eyes’. T’Adna did not speak. _‘You must see that the tenderness in my chest is no longer yours to possess.’ He did not love T’Adna, for her hands wove naught but cruelty._ ” 

He couldn’t help but admire her keen eye as she deftly traced the figures. She spoke his language as fluently as T’Pau herself, but it was a creative dialect, soft and artistic. There were things that could not be captured in translation, but she still made it sound like poetry. 

Leonard beamed. “It’s a love story? I never would have guessed!”

“That is but one story among many within The Passages of Narnine. It is not unlike your Aesop’s Fables,” he explained. 

“Narnine? That doesn’t sound Vulcan,” Jim said, shoving Leonard over to get a closer look. 

“The use of names to distinguish between gender and heritage was common before Surak, but it was believed to be artistic to use one that fell outside the norm. My brother had considered choosing his own name for a time. Mother convinced him otherwise.”

“Hmm,” Jim said. 

“You look disappointed,” said McCoy. 

“Vulcans do not feel disappointment,” he corrected automatically. At their skeptical gazes, he sighed. “I would have preferred to see something more helpful to my people. This will be of value nonetheless.”

Jim nodded in understanding. “That’s alright. They don’t require you to provide for them outside your…you know, duties. I’m sure they are grateful to what you have provided. So are we, you know? That is…”

Leonard rolled his eyes. “What Jim means is: for what it’s worth, we’re glad you stayed.”

“Even you?” Spock asked, eyebrow raised. 

He glanced away. “Even me.”

It felt like a victory.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay. So. I've been TOTALLY swamped with work and classes and transferring colleges and a plethora of other things and I have had hardly any time at all to write (which I find rather regrettable) and this is my first attempt at getting back into it. I love this story and I really want to finish it but LIFE! Thank you for sticking with me.

They were on Denobula. it was warm on the equator and cold on the poles not unlike earth, but where they were, somewhere to the north, Spock felt neither hot nor cold. One day on this planet was nearly a month by standard time, Denobulans never seemed to sleep. He ached for it to be dark enough to see the stars and to meditate without the clanking and shouting of the city. And, yet, the rest of the crew felt that it was perfectly adequate for shore leave. A two-day respite, but shore leave nonetheless. He would rather be aboard the ship surrounded by the hum of the engines and the looming threat of Jim bursting into his quarters than remain on this crowded planet. Spock slumped back onto the cold stone bench.

Doctor McCoy wandered toward him, grinning and holding a tricorder at everything that walked by. 

“Why, Mr. Spock,” he said, altogether too cheerful, “if I had to take a guess, I’d say you don’t look too pleased to be here.”

Spock resisted the urge to grind his teeth. The tricorder was now pointed his way, its beeping adding to the assault of sounds. “Astute of you.”

He turned back to watching Nyota converse with the niece of a Denobulan Starfleet advisor, recently deceased, who had been held in very high esteem by the Federation. She appeared to be making very good diplomatic progress. He carefully turned away from McCoy in the hope that it would get him to _go away_. His efforts appeared to be in vain. The doctor seemed to have no desire to continue his medical adventure. He remained rather peskily next to the bench where Spock had been attempting to seek quiet. 

“You know,” he said, having put his medical equipment back in his bag, “there is one thing I’ve been curious about.”

“Highly surprising, given your distaste towards anything that might present difficulty.”

“Well aren’t you prickly today,” McCoy said. “Did you meditate on your head last night?”

Spock chewed the inside of his lip. No, he hadn’t meditated at all. That was likely the reason for his distress. He had been consumed by an article that, although it had very little relevance to his duties as science officer, was highly enlightening. Insomnia was his price to pay for curiosity, he supposed. 

“Doctor,” he said, an idea blooming in the back of his aching head, “If you convince the captain to allow me to return to the ship, I will answer any questions you have.”

The other man’s facial musculature realigned itself to its usual skeptical expression. “You feeling alright?”

“Fine.”

“Spock, you’re supposed to be resting. On shore leave. It’s only another day.”

He vacillated between struggling for stoicism and letting a bit of a plea slip by in the form of expression. If there was anything that would get doctor McCoy to do as he asked, it was a show of emotion. He turned up his eyebrows and gave his best imitation of Scotty’s can-I-please face. 

“Any questions you have,” he repeated.

McCoy sighed through his nose. “That won’t do. I can’t send you back to the ship without a legitimate medical reason.” He pulled out his communicator. “Are you sure you don’t have any symptoms?”

“Actually, I seem to be experiencing a mild migraine. I believe quiet would be conductive toward my recovery.” Triumph snuck through his control.

“Migraine,” he said, “gotcha. Alright, transporter room, beam up Mister Spock and I, will you?” he asked into the mesh of the receiver.

“Understood,” came the voice of the unlucky ensign still on duty.

The sigh of relief that escaped him as the transportation beam left his body tingling was unintentional. The hum of the ship made him feel warm. He would have to follow through with his promise, he realized, a bit of dread seeping into his system. The doctor was already waving him toward the door, the destination could only be the sickbay.

As they passed the doors to the turbolift, Spock found that his prediction had been incorrect. They stood at the door to his quarters, and instead of wielding a hypo like he so frequently did, McCoy’s arms were crossed. 

“There’s only one prescription for what you’ve got and it entails four hours of uninterrupted sleep,” he said matter-of-factly. 

“I do not need—”

“I know the difference between meditation and sleep, Spock, and you need both, but right now you’re fatigued. Emotional stability can come after you’ve taken care of your body and _don’t_ ,” he said, stopping him as he opened his mouth to argue, “think you’re getting out of telling me why you’re so behind on your ever-perfect schedule. Comm me when you’re awake and I’ll make sure you didn’t pick anything up on that godforsaken rock.”

His pride wanted him to argue, but his eyelids were drooping in a very un-Vulcan way. McCoy looked unabashedly smug as Spock retreated into his quarters with no argument at all. 

 

“Radical emotionalism?” Jim read, leaning against Spock's door. “That’s the best you could come up with?” 

McCoy shrugged. “I don’t know. It seemed logical at the time,” he said.

Spock took a moment to glower. 

He had gotten to sleep much easier than he expected to, and four hours had gone by in a blink. For the first time in months, he even woke up drowsy. As requested, the moment he called, McCoy was at his bedside stabbing him with boosters and taking blood samples. He trusted that the moment Leonard knew, Jim would be on his way. Spock was pleased to see that he was not wrong. 

“Spock, really?” the captain said, pouting with big blue eyes, “I try so hard to get you off of this ship, broaden your cultural horizons, and you manage to bribe Bones into letting you come back?”

“Indeed.” he stifled a yawn.

“And Bones, you’re just as bad! Could you come up with something less scientific?”

The doctor just rocked back on his heels. “He had a headache. I figured I’d make your day more interesting.”

Jim nodded skeptically, glancing back at Spock with a critical eyebrow raised. “Did you have a headache?”

“Yes.”

“You poor thing,” he cooed, earning a glare from Spock and grin from Leonard. “Well since you’re such a spoilsport, we’re going to drag you into social interaction anyway.”

“I was already planning on it,” said McCoy. 

“Great. I’m gonna go piss off Uhura.”

“You go do what you do best, Jim,” Leonard said with a wave.

Spock found that he was not nearly as unwilling to be dragged into Jim’s plans as he had been earlier. Maybe it was because he hadn’t meditated. 

 

Even after meditation, however, he found that he did not mind the presence of Leonard in his room. He was stretched across the bed, feet where the little round pillow was hidden under the covers. Spock had found his place on the meditation mat, enjoying the slight burn of his thighs as he balanced in a focus position. He didn’t mind the quiet tapping of the Padd keys on the other side of the room. Leonard was, ironically, the calm before the storm. Soon his room would be overflowing with whoever Jim decided to drag along. He hoped it was Chekov. He had several articles to recommend. 

“Tell me about your brother, Spock,” Leonard said, interrupting the comfortable silence. 

“What do you wish to know?”

“I’d never heard you talk about him before. I was curious.”

“Am I to understand that you have been pondering this question since Athens?”

McCoy shrugged, pillowing his head on his forearms. “It hasn’t always been on the back of my mind, if that’s what you mean. I just thought about it now.”

He raised a critical eyebrow. 

“Okay, I might have been a bit curious.”

Spock tilted his head, observing the angular stretch of his knuckles on his knees. His brother wasn’t a topic his mind frequently sought out. He hadn’t actually seen the man since his early teens. Every so often he would receive letter—real ones, bright colors on strange parchment with no date or return address. It wasn’t a surprise that things had turned out as they had. He had always been oddly detached, from Spock, from their parents, from Vulcan. When he disappeared, Spock's mother had been worried, but he was confident that his brother would do much better among the stars.

“His name is Sybok,” he said. 

“Alright, that’s a start. What’s he like? Unless he’s—”

“He is alive,” Spock assured him, “simply absent. It has always been so. He was highly intelligent as a child, simply too emotive for my peoples’ preference.”

“More human than his half-brother, huh? Funny,” McCoy said, Padd discarded. He was watching Spock with eyes that were genuinely curious.

“My mother thought so as well. She said we made a ‘unique pair.’” The memories made his heart warm.

“I’ll bet you did. Was it you who pulled him out of trouble or the other way around?”

Spock quelled the twitch of his lips that threatened to slip past his control. “Quite frequently,” he said, “it was both and neither.”

“Oho, the wonder twins?”

“I am unaware of the reference.”

McCoy just smiled and motioned for him to continue. Spock wasn’t sure if he just wanted a story or if there was some underlying goal to his curiosity. He found no reason to decline.  
“He left home when he was twenty-three,” Spock said. “For a full Vulcan, that is still quite young. I was nine. My mother was devastated, but my father told me that Sybok had consulted him beforehand. I do not know what was said, but he left me a very emotional note that was likely his attempt at a…” he paused, unsure of the wording of the phrase he was searching for. 

“Pep talk?” Leonard suggested.

“Yes, in a sense. It puzzled me for many years.”

Leonard smirked. “Where is he now?”

Spock changed his position, resting on one foot in a crouch. It was a pleasing stretch, although difficult to maintain while conversing. 

“I do not know,” he confessed. “He sends me letters. I presume he does it as a way of telling me where he is, but there is never a return address. The last was Trill paper with a carbon-based ink that was registered in the database to the upper continent.” The parchment was thick and textured, a delicate array of pastels that captured they eye and overshadowed the text. It had been too beautiful for him to throw away. “I believe he has been wandering the galaxy with little intent or purpose. He claims to have found religion.”

“Well, good for him, I suppose,” said Leonard, flopping gracelessly onto his back. “He sounds like a character.”

“Indeed.”

“I’m hungry,” he mumbled, pressing his face into the cloth. “You wanna call Jim so we can eat already?”

Spock obliged, flipping his comm open the frequency that was preset to the captain. 

“I’m coming, I’m coming, Bones, hold your horses,” came the reply before Spock had said anything. 

“Get your ass over here, Jim!” McCoy shouted from across the room. 

“Better clean up your room, Spock! I’ve got the crew!” he chirped, and there was the sound of the other comm shutting as Uhura’s voice began to say something. 

His period of peace looked to be over. 

“Hey Spock,” Leonard said as soon as Spock flipped the device shut. “Thanks.”

“It was a debt I owed,” he said, lips twitching again. 

 

At some point during the night, nearly asked why their little gathering was being held in his quarters yet again, but Nyota was dead asleep with her head on Leonard’s chest, her legs hanging off the side of the mattress. They had claimed both Spock's sheets and pillow for themselves. Jim was grinning at them, tossing someone’s shoe lightly in the air. Spock frowned at it. 

Chekov was in the middle of an exhaustion-slurred sentence about atmospheric conditions on mars. He was starting to tip over, but Sulu kept poking him in the side. 

“Stop it, Hikaru,” he muttered, clinging to the Padds that Spock had given him like they were required for his survival. 

“Alright, kid,” Sulu said. “I think it’s time to head out. Thanks for letting us stay, Mr. Spock. I’m gonna drop this one off in his quarters so he doesn’t get lost.”

Jim waved. “You can come back if you want, ya know,” he offered, and Spock just shrugged at having his quarters pawned off. 

Sulu glanced at Chekov and grinned. “Nah, I’ll probably just head to bed too. Seems like everybody else is,” he said, motioning to the two on the bed. 

“True,” Jim conceded. “You’re staying with us, right Scotty?”

“As long as you’ll have me,” he said. 

On a whim, Spock had given him a spherical puzzle that he had as a child on Vulcan. He was pleased to see that it had been well received. Scotty was attempting to tear it apart with such rapt attention that it had become a spectacle of entertainment. Spock was no longer trying to replicate meditation poses, it was far too busy to concentrate to the level that he would have liked. He was content to sit and watch from a chair next to Jim. 

“So where are you going next?” Scotty asked, his thumb hooking under a curve of metal and pulling up uselessly. He cursed it under his breath. 

“Going?” Jim repeated, sipping on his synthehol. 

“You’ve been trouncing about the galaxy picking up little bits of Vulcan, haven’t you?”

“Well, that’s certainly one way to put it,” Jim snickered. “I have no idea where our informant will send us next.”

Scotty let his fingers pause for a moment, shaking out his hand. “Well, that’s no good. Who knows if this secret admirer of yours will ever contact you again,” he pointed out, diving back into the mechanism from a different angle. 

“He’s got a point.”

Spock frowned. It was possible that he would not receive any further instructions on, as the engineer put it, pieces of Vulcan. However much it might increase the efficiency of their missions, it would not benefit New Vulcan. There was a small part of him that felt the traces of guilt for abandoning what should have been his task. Jim’s eyes were boring holes in the back of his head and he knew that his lack of meditation was beginning to take its toll. 

“Well,” Scotty continued, seemingly unaware of the confusion in the room, “that doesn’t mean that you have to stop looking.”

That night, Spock dreamed of a distant shore leave where the wind chilled his skin and the stars lit the stones beneath his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know of any errors you see! Your feedback keeps me going <3

**Author's Note:**

> If you're here by recommendation from my other works, fantastic and welcome back! If not, I hope you decide to stick around.


End file.
